Refrigerated vending machines are known.
Examples of such vending machines include U.S. Pat. No. 5,520,941 to Oosterling; U.S. Pat. No. 5,086,693 to Tippmann et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,457,963 to Cahill-O'Brien et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,244,266 to Maldanis; U.S. Pat. No. 4,597,506 to Eglise et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,523,439 to Denisot; U.S. Pat. No. 3,884,386 to Urcola; U.S. Pat. No. 1,866,511 to McKee et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 1,859,270 to McKee et al.; and U.S. Pat. No. 854,805 to Crawford.
Despite such an abundance of vending machines, many of which are refrigerated, there is still a need for a vending machine which overcome the drawbacks of the prior art devices.
Such drawbacks include that none of the known conventional devices include a lock-out for preventing the sale of vended meat, or other perishable food, or other perishable non-food items which have been warmed up or which have experienced a warming up cycle.
In addition, none of the known devices include a remote calling device for automatically contacting an off-site operator or other operator who is at a distance from the machine.
Still further, none of the known conventional devices includes a remote alarm for alerting the operator to a situation in which the controlled environment inside the vending machine is experiencing an undesired warming up of (or an undesired cooling down of) such controlled environment.